All the time since my flight from Ascutney, I wanted to do a cross-country flight. Many hang glider and paraglider pilots fly x-country regularly, and they all rave about the experience. I was definitely getting inspired to cut the cord, to leave the fishbowl.
New pilots were joining the x-country ranks as well, like Ilya Rivkin with his recent 2 flights. I couldn't help it anymore, I needed to fly somewhere. It didn't matter why or where. Just needed a good day to get me high into the sky.
Last Sunday at Tanner-Hiller was that day. I got to the airport around 11am and I couldn't believe how great the sky looked. It was a gold mine. And many people came out to play. I don't think I have ever seen so many pilots at Tanner-Hiller.
I spent some time replacing a downtube on my glider that I have broken a day before at Burke, and I was ready to launch around 1:30PM. But the line to be towed up was pretty long. With only one tug towing, it took me more than an hour to get my glider on a cart and ready to roll.
All Lined Up
Nick was helping on launch and made the process as efficient as possible.
Nick assisting on launch
The tow was pretty uneventful. Normal thermal bumps here and there, but nothing crazy.
Takeoff
In a few minutes I released from the plane. Rhett left me in a nice thermal and I was going up 300' per minute.
Release
It took some time to get high enough to consider leaving some place. I lost a couple of thermals and found other ones, sometimes getting 600 ft/min up, sometimes getting into sink.
Climbing Up!
Climbing up with other pilots around me, made it even more fun experience.
Sharing the Sky. Lift is everywhere!
Finally, I reached 5500' MSL and was probably another 500' from the cloudbase. I decided I had enough altitude to go on a glide with no return. I picked a cloud I liked in the distance, and went for it. Obviously, I didn't picked either a good direction or good cloud, but I was too overwhelmed with the whole thing.... Gotta start somewhere, though. The one thing I was paying attention to was possible fields to land in. I saw some options in the distance I could probably use.
Leaving for another cloud.
My glide wasn't long. Falcon doesn't have a great glide to begin with, and I grossly underestimated how far those clouds were. Very soon I was at approximately 1000' above ground and started picking up landing zones. Some of the options I saw in the distance were unusable. Swamps or something like that. But there were a few field I flew over, so I turned around and went back to those. Huge hay fields. Recently mowed. Couldn't be better.
Hay field - my LZ of the day
On the ground
The landing was pretty good, except I flared a bit too soon. I held the flare and parachuted back to the ground. Then moved the glider to a tree line. A friendly guy from a nearby house came out to greet me. I apologized for landing on his land. He told me, the field wasn't his, but his neighbor's and they probably didn't care either. The guy was just impressed with my landing and wanted to chat. He even offered to relaunch me - "Hey, I've got a truck and a small hill. Can you launch from there?". I thanked him, but declined... He didn't offer to drive me back to the airport though. That would be much more useful.
I called Rhett and asked if he could find someone willing to fetch me. Bob Burchard, manager at Tanner-Hiller, volunteered to bring my truck down. I started packing my glider, and then waited another 40 minutes for my ride to arrive. I only flew 3.5 miles in a straight line, but I took 30 minutes of drive time to get there. Big thanks to Bob for helping me!
I was considering different options for a weekend - looking at Mohawk Trail, or maybe towing. Trail didn't look promising - too light and too cross from the north. North direction could be great for Burke Mountain in Vermont. Jon Atwood, president of MA hang gliding/paragliding club, posted that he was going to Burke, and I wanted to join him. A new site to fly!
Jon stopped by my house around 7am. We loaded my glider on Jon's truck and got on the road. No one else expressed interest going to Burke, so it was only two of us. A few paraglider pilots were going to join us there. Jon flies both wings - hang gliders and paragliders.
Drive to Burke is pretty easy (I-495 to I-93, and I-93 almost all the way there), but it is long - 3 hours. Carpooling definitely helps to save gas, and to make trip more fun.
When we got there, Burke site director, AJ, gave us an intro. We walked the LZ (you can see a video of LZ below). The LZ was going to be a challenge for sure. It was on a slope, with prevailing winds blowing uphill. Since landing downhill is never a good idea, the landing would have to be either crosswind or downwind/uphill. On a falcon, I could have tried to land crosswind, but there were a few obstacles - like a wooden walkway, and uneven ground. The best way would be not to land there at all. Get some altitude, and land elsewhere... if I could get enough altitude.
The launch is located between two ski lifts. It is a short, but a rather steep walk from the road. When we got to the launch, clouds above us were massive, indicating some serious thermal activity. Probably not something we wanted to launch in. Wind was pretty strong, too. So we decided to wait. I definitely wasn't going to risk it with rough conditions at unfamiliar site.
Around 3pm winds started to get manageable, but I still felt it was a bit strong for a Falcon. Another pilot (Art, I think) on a Sport 2, launched around 3:30pm. He went straight up. We could see him parking his glider above our heads. He could penetrate upwind, if he wanted to, but it felt a bit too much for me.
After 4pm winds started to get pretty light and I decided to launch. I didn't get any surprises on launch. All went really well. But I immediately discovered that I picked a wrong time to launch. I had a blue hole (no clouds) above me. No thermal lift, and ridge lift was pretty light. I managed to stay afloat for 15 minutes but very soon sank below the launch and had to head out to land. So that nasty LZ was my destination now.
I didn't want to deal with uneven ground and obstacles, so I decided to try downwind/uphill landing. All was going OK until I decided to flare.... apparently there was a somewhat flat spot on that slope and my flare happened right there. Glider got pushed forward, I went through the frame with enough force to completely break one of the downtubes. I would be in a better shape if I didn't flare at all. Dammit!
Jon landed his Falcon soon after me. He probably could have flown longer, but he wanted to fly his paraglider that day as well. Jon chose to land crosswind (you can see his landing in the video) and it worked great. No dropped gliders, no broken downtubes.
Jon is landing his Falcon
To add insult to injury, all paragliders that launched 30 minutes after me, went all the way to the cloudbase - 6000 feet MSL. The blue hole I launched into disappeared, and a nice set of cummies came along providing everyone with a nice evening lift to the top. Oh well...
...
Overall, not a bad day, though. I got a chance to fly a new site, got to experience a different kind of landing zone. It was all good. Thanks to Jon for taking me there!
Will I go to Burke again? Sure, if conditions are right, I might. But it would be rather low on my priority list. Somehow, I wasn't particularly fond of that site, and not only because I broke a downtube there. Long drive, challenging LZ (if you don't go up), awkward launch site, small ridge... I think, for me, there are better places to fly. If I lived not too far from Burke - it would be a pretty good site, though.
After my first attempt at Mohawk Trail I wanted to go back and have a much longer flight there. The ridge to the south goes for several miles, and if you can get on top of it, you can fly for hours.
Anyway, Dana Harris posted that he was going to stop by and check Trail on Friday, 07/25/14. I checked forecast and it looked promising - ~12MPH West. Better than last time anyway - a good enough reason to take a day off.
I got to launch site around 1PM. Vitaly Pogrebnoy showed up shortly after. Dana was already there, but didn't want to set up yet. Wind was too light for him. Well, my goals were different for the day - since I already spent time getting there, I'd take a sledder, a practice run, if you will. I set up my glider. Waited a bit to see if conditions would improve. I could see thermals raise up the slope regularly, but they didn't look particularly strong. I decided to give it a try anyway.
Dana helped me with the launch. Wind wasn't strong enough to worry about full wire crew.
Dana assisting me on launch
My launch was uneventful. I picked up what I thought was a good cycle, but it was just too weak. I wasn't going up. I tried to position myself over route 2 below in hopes that I can get thermal lift from it.
First pass. Maintaining.
After 2 passes, I started sliding away from the ridge and thinking about landing preparation... and then I hit a couple of bumps and started working it. Soon after I was at 400' above launch. Lift was there but pretty weak and broken - no time to relax.
Above launch
Vitaly launched when he saw me climbing. I was above him for a few minutes, then I started losing altitude and couldn't get into a consistent lift.
Vitaly joined the fun
I saw Vitaly working his way up, crossing gap to the south and floating away. I tried to do the same, but made a mistake leaving too low. Well, actually, I made a mistake earlier, I didn't try to cross the gap and transition to south ridge while I had altitude to attempt that.
Even though I left low, I had a backup plan. I saw a pretty large field ahead and by my estimated I should have been able to get there with some altitude to spare.
Mistake - leaving too low
By the time I realized that I wasn't going to get up and had to land - my backup plan became the only plan. Now, I just needed to decide which part of the field to use for landing.
I initially hoped to land west (that narrow strip straight ahead in the photo below), as that was most likely wind direction in the valley, but I couldn't tell what the actual wind direction was.
The only LZ option, but which one? Straight ahead, or the closest one?
When I got closer to the field I planned to use, I discovered two problems. First, there was some, what looked like, farm equipment, and second - I had too much altitude for the final glide.
I started to do an S-turn to lose altitude and realized that I forgot to unzip. While I got busy with the zipper, I made a 180 turn and lost too much altitude to go back.
Picking the one straight ahead, but there are some obstacles
At that point I had only one option - to land parallel to the ridge. The ground below looked fine for landing. I picked up speed, got into the ground effect, and flared.
Change of plan. On final, parallel to the ridge.
Instead of raising up in response to my flare, the glider dropped on the ground and put me on my belly. Thank dog for those wheels on the basebar - glider and I were safe on the ground, looking up through patches of grass (photo below).
Belly landing downwind. Gentle enough.
When I got up, I realized I had a slight tailwind when I landed. Not too bad, all things considered. The whole experience was exhilarating and I made a few mistakes... but my first landing out experience went smooth enough. Yay!
...
I texted Dana to let him know I was ok. He offered to pick me up. He wasn't going to fly - there was no chance that day for him to go high and far.
I texted him my location and he brought my truck down. Thank you, Dana!
Soon after I got a text from Vitaly. He landed in one of the main LZs. Apparently, soon after he floated away, following ridge to the south, he lost lift as well and had to land.
I drove Dana back to launch and then picked up Vitaly. All worked out well but, yet again, I wished I had a longer flight. Maybe next time...
Westerly winds are prevalent in New England, so most of the foot-launching sites we fly face west. One of the rare east facing sites is Mount Greylock in North Adams, MA. It also happened to be the tallest point in Massachusetts. To fly hang gliders there, one must have at least H3 rating and, with H3, one can only fly under "direct supervision of a qualified USHGA Observer, Examiner, or Advanced Instructor".
So when forecast was calling for an easterly day, and I saw that Tom Lanning was going (he is an observer), I immediately contacted him and asked for help. He was happy to help but didn't really know if he could be an observer due to recent rules change that might not have been reflected on the site. It was Saturday night and I didn't have any clue if I could get anyone else to help me, so I almost abandoned the idea. However, Tom told me to come anyway. He was sure we would figure it out. I was so glad he convinced me to go.
I got up early. I was a bit anxious and didn't sleep well. It was a good thing I got up early though, as I got a text from Tom at 6:30am asking if I wanted to share a ride. I was all for it.
Tom, Peter Judge, and I met at Tom's house around 7:45am. I volunteered to drive. It takes around 2 hours to get to Adams, MA. When we got there, Tom asked me if I wanted to see the bailout LZ. I didn't think it was necessary. I already walked the rest of possible LZs when I flew Mohawk Trail, and I checked a satellite image of the bailout LZ. It was huge. I wouldn't have any problems with it. Plus, if we detoured to look at it, we would be delayed way past afternoon, and I would be more stressed about launching ASAP. There would probably be more traffic in the air, too. So we went directly to the top.
Greylock has a nice road going all the way to the top. Parking at the top costs only $2 for Massachusetts residents. The setup area is wide and grassy, and it is only a very short walk from the parking lot. Overall, it was the best launch site I've seen so far.
After I setup my glider, Tom asked me how comfortable I was with air traffic. I was ok with it, but still preferred to keep it at the minimum, if possible. Especially, as Tom explained, Greylock had a very small ridge, and if you didn't go up right away traffic could get really bad. No reason to delay then - I put my gear on, and carried glider to the launch.
The launch at Greylock is a flat slope kind - a very good run is required in light winds. It is not a big problem for a Falcon though, and I've never had any issues launching from 150' hill at Morningside (similar slope). I waited for a good, straight-in cycle, and ran off.
The launch was pretty easy. I floated away and turned north, positioning myself over the road below, hoping to get some lift. The good thing was - I didn't lose altitude, but I didn't gain it either. I made a few passes in front of launch, and after working hard on staying afloat for about 10 minutes, I slowly started to climb. At some point, I climbed ~300' over the launch, looking down on all the gliders and the monument below me.
Above the launch
The view toward valley was awesome too! It was still overcast and not much hope for thermal lift. I had to keep working with what I've got for a while.
Overlooking the valley (above launch)
In another 10 minutes having the ridge almost to myself, I noticed another glider sitting at launch. The problem was, the best lift was right in front of launch. That's when I made a mistake that put me on the ground. I moved over trying to stay to the side of launch, and give other glider some room. The glider never launched, but I lost altitude and couldn't get it back. Later, I was told that I should have stayed where the best lift was, as if I wasn't climbing, other pilots wouldn't want to launch either. Lesson learned.
Mistake - getting out of the way
I tried to get some lift off rocks below launch, but I found nothing. Very soon I was looking up on this majestic mountain. I made a few circles over the bailout LZ, and caught a few thermal bumps, enough to extend my descent for a minute or two. But landing was coming up fast.
Way too low
Streamer in the LZ was showing slight south-east breeze, so I would have to do base leg over wires going along the road. I didn't want to go too low over the wires, so I just executed Falcon-dive and landed right in the middle of the field. Falcon is really easy to bring down on a short notice.
Landing
My landing was pretty good. And I was really excited to have half an hour flight. My first flight from a much higher mountain than I ever launched before. It was awesome. I liked every minute of it, and could not wait to go back. The best flying site all around.
The rest of the day I spent retrieving my truck and waiting for Tom and Peter to return from the sky. Tom surprised me by landing just an hour later (he wrote about it here - "Traffic"). And Peter landed in the main LZ a few hours later.
When everyone has landed, a bunch of pilots went to Freight Yard Restaurant in North Adams. We shared the war stories over food and drinks. Nice conclusion to a great day of flying.
After my Ascutney flight, I was mostly going to Morningside and Tanner-Hiller for aerotows, and I got one West Rutland sledder in between. Nothing to write home about. The only progress I made was - I stopped breaking weak links. All my flights, however, were just extended sledders at best. Until one weekend at Tanner-Hiller at the end of June....
I got off my first tow, boated around for a bit, got a few beeps from the vario here and there, and landed. While talking to Rhett after the flight, he mentioned that it was a good idea to start turning right away when he waved me off, and not to fiddle with harness and the tow bridle . I was all like "that sounds obvious, why didn't I think of it myself? Duh!". So I tried that on the next flight, and I went up right away! I gained 1000 feet in the first thermal where Rhett left me. That was awesome!
Go round and round
Then I found another thermal and got pretty close to the cloudbase.
Close to the clouds. Overlooking Quabbin reservoir.
I wasn't used to all that spinning though, and while it was fun - going up, fishing for another thermal, going up again - I started feeling a bit airsick. To recover, I went on a long glide to another side of the airfield.
On a glide
By the time I got there, I felt better, and decided to fish for another thermal. And I found one over the sandpit (you can see it in the photo above, to the right of the airstrip).
I played with it for another 15 minutes or so, and decided it was time to land.
I spent the rest of the day taking photos/videos and talking to other pilots. I got the taste of thermaling and got a good practice looking for thermals and staying in them. Great day!
One of the major sites that open up when you get H3 rating is Mount Ascutney, Vermont. It is one of the popular cross-country flying sites. Thus on a good flying day people are reluctant to deal with newbies. Site director, Jake, invented a rule to have a first flight off Ascutney to be early in the day. That means a sledder. And it needed to be observed by H4 that flown there before.
Saturday, June 7th, was looking really good as one of those cross-country flying days. People on MA hang gliding list where discussing forecast and who was going to fly... I sheepishly raised my virtual hand and asked if anyone would be willing to help this newbie. Tom Lanning excused himself saying he was still waiting for parts for his T2C glider. But Ilya Rivkin offered his help to show me LZs. Great!
Ilya and I were going to meet at Morningside and leave for Ascutney around 9:30am. While we were deciding on logistics, Tom showed up as well. Apparently he couldn't stay away when such great day was forecasted. His T2C was still not ready, but he had a Falcon. It's nice to have a spare glider.
Tom was happy to join us and help Ilya introducing me to the site. We loaded gliders on my truck and drove to LZs on the other side of Ascutney. Unfortunately, the shortest road to the LZ was closed and we had to detour on a few gravel roads. That added another 20 minutes of travel time.
To me it was all part of fun as Tom knows a lot about this site, flying in general, and always has a story or two to tell. The extra driving time wasn't boring.
Photo courtesy of Ilya Rivkin
After we checked all LZs and discussed possible flying patterns and approaches, we had to detour all the way back to the road that goes up the mountain through the state park. By the time we got there, it was almost noon and many pilots were already at the gate, minimizing number of vehicles they had to take up. Jake was there as well. He decided that it was too late for me to fly there. Later on, I learned another pilot had his first Ascutney flight the same day, and he actually soared. Oh well, not quite sure the point of that rule was anyway, but I didn't feel like arguing. I could always go and enjoy towing at Morningside.
Since the gliders were already on my truck, and I was going back anyway (no extra vehicle to retrieve later on), I drove Tom and Ilya all the way to the parking lot at the top of the mountain. Then I went back to Morningside for aerotowing.
I had a few flights at Morningside, and I discovered than my towing skills degraded. Now I was snapping weak links on almost every flight. Granted that was in midday, pretty turbulent, thermal conditions, but it never happened to me before, not at that rate anyway, and no one else was breaking weak links that day either. I snapped 2 links and then had 2 good flights.
In the evening, Tom and Amy treated me to dinner for all my troubles. There is always some silver lining!
What else? Oh yes, Ilya, in his brand new Sport2, had first cross-country flight that day. Congratulations, Ilya!
A week later, I snapped a weak link again, this time while towing with Rhett. He immediately told what I was doing wrong. I haven't snapped a weak-link since. What it was, when a plane would be bumped up by a thermal, I was correcting my position too fast, putting too much stress on the link. All I had to do was to make the transition slower and that fixed the problem. That was easy. Thanks Rhett!
Hike, Hike, Hike and Get Your Sledder
A couple of weeks after my first attempt, the conditions at Ascutney were looking pretty good for another try.
Saturday, Kevin Webb and I asked John Musto to help us out with our required sledder. He could do it only in the evening that day, and we hoped that condition would still be good around 5-6pm. Good for a sledder anyway. Another pilot joined our group as well. A visiting hang gliding instructor, working temporarily at Morningside (I forgot his name...).
John was super helpful and he even drove us there! We walked the main LZ again. And then drove to the launch site.
Hike from the parking lot at the top of the mountain to the launch site is ~0.5 miles. Walking with a 17' long bag on your shoulder is not an easy thing. Hiking on a mountain trail with this thing, is much worse. At least Falcon is somewhat light ~45-50 pounds.... plus a harness and a helmet, water and whatever equipment you take with you. It's a workout!
We made it there in about 20 minutes or so.
We set up our gliders and ...... the wind was crossing from the north and it was pretty gusty, too. After waiting for another hour, we decided to try tomorrow morning. Park was closing soon.
Windy evening at Ascutney (photo courtesy of Kevin Webb)
We put gliders behind the trees and left them there for the night. The other pilot that was with us had to work tomorrow morning, so he broke down his glider and we helped him to carry it back. Tomorrow was going to be another hike. At least this time only with my harness.
...
The next morning, we got to Ascutney as early as we could. Right after park opened. Hiking that trail without a glider on my shoulder was so much, much easier. I was hooked-in and ready to roll by 9:30AM. At launch, there was a slight breeze coming straight in at about 5mph. A few other pilots took a morning hike to enjoy the views. They helped on launch, and even took a video of me running down the rock. Camera on the wing of my glider got knocked out of whack while we were carrying the glider, so all I got was a "nice" video of my wing with not much else in the view.
Launch itself was pretty easy in such mild conditions. I set myself a goal to run all the way to the end of the rock (it's pretty steep), and I think I got that part down. The flight was short and uneventful, but I got a flavor of this site, and I hope to try again in soarable conditions. It should be fun. Big thanks to John Musto for helping us out with this task.
A week after I got my H3 rating, I got a text from Vitaly Pogrebnoy asking if I wanted to fly Mohawk Trail. The launch site is in North Adams, MA, right above Route 2 not far from hairpin. Vitaly has flown there a few times and he thought the forecast was good for Sunday.
Wind direction indeed looked good, but wind speed was on a lighter side. It didn't matter to me as I would gladly take a sledder just to fly at a new site.
Vitaly came to my house around 7am, we loaded my glider on his car and off we went. It's about 2 hours drive from my house, but we also wanted to check LZs. Another pilot, Rosan, would join us at the launch site.
All was going according to plan for 2-3PM launch. We checked different landing options, left one car in the bailout LZ right across the launch, and started setting up our gliders. Around 11am there were nice cumulus clouds forming above launch, indicating a possibility of thermal lift. By 1-2pm the sky was mostly clear above us with nice clouds across the valley. Not much use to us. Wind also was very weak, under 10 mph. It looked like a sledder day. Oh well.
I launched around 4pm. The launch was pretty easy in a very light wind. When in the air, there was not much going up close to the ridge. I was losing altitude right away. I made a few turns trying to sniff something out above route 2 to no avail.
Flying over Route 2
The bailout LZ is just 800 feet below launch, so there is not much time to do anything unless you find some lift right away. In 3 minutes I was in landing mode. I boxed the field and made a nice DBF approach landing in south direction. LZ windsock was just hanging down most of the time with slight gusts once in a while. I was landing precisely where I wanted to land. I got bumped by some thermal activity on final but corrected it and landed well. All that training was paying off.
Vitaly launched soon after me and didn't stay in the air for too long either. He landed with a nice flare.
I really liked the site, but one needed more than 10mph winds, or/and solid thermals to reliably fly there. Maybe next time...
